Teenage Star Has A Thing About Clothes Encounters

When last we saw Sam Huntington, he was running around the big city in primitive clothes and hunting, among other things, a monster spider.

This week we can see Huntington wearing primitive clothing and running around the big city hunting, among other things, monster concert tickets.

The more important difference between "Jungle 2 Jungle" (1997) and the new "Detroit Rock City" is that this film should hit an audience that is more or less Huntington's age.

"Let's hope so," the 17-year-old Huntington said recently from his home in New Hampshire. "I mean, if I hadn't been in it, I wouldn't have seen `Jungle 2 Jungle.' It was for kids and that's great, but this film is for everybody. Even if it gets bad reviews, people will still think it's cool."

In "Detroit Rock City" Huntington plays the shyest of four teens who have no greater ambition than to see KISS perform live. Jeremiah, or Jam as he's called, has a mother (Lin Shaye) who is convinced KISS stands for "Knights in Satan's Service." But so fanatical are Jam and his friends that they defy her and all common sense in a quest for those precious tickets.

All of this was new for Huntington, whose music tastes run from Korn to Limp Bizkit, Dave Matthews and Crystal Method.

"I love my music, but I would never do anything this crazy to see a band," he said. "Maybe I'd do it for a girl."

And obsessed KISS fans in particular were fun to experience. Much of the film involves the boys trying to find a way into the big show as a huge crowd gathers in front of the Toronto building that was standing in for Detroit's Cobo Arena. The scenes were shot in the early morning, and most of the 400-plus extras were wearing their personal KISS gear.

"Even in Toronto, the coolest place on earth, you don't want to have to deal with that many extras," he said. "And it was late night, and it was really cold. But they were so into it. When you're in the streets with everybody dressed like that, you just kind of get sucked into it. It was suddenly, `Here I am in 1978.' "

Huntington, who was born in 1982, got interested in acting through his mother's role as director of a community theater group near the family home near Keene, N.H. He had wanted to try professional film acting as early as age 10 but said she told him to wait until he was at least 13.

He did play in several professional productions with a theater group based in Peterborough, N.H., and landed a part in an independent film called "Boys." So he was ready when, true to their agreement, at age 13 his mother took him to New York to speak with agents.

Ten months later he was playing Mimi Siku, the son Tim Allen finds in the jungle in "Jungle 2 Jungle."

Huntington, who has since been seen in the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie "Harvest of Fire" with Patty Duke and has done a guest spot on "Law & Order," still lives with his family in New Hampshire and will be a senior this fall at a public high school.

He auditioned for "Detroit Rock City" from his home. His mother helped him make a tape that was sent out to his agent, who got it to the filmmakers.

During the filming he got to meet band members, to have a brief love scene with an older woman (21-year-old Melanie Lynskey of "Heavenly Creatures" and "Ever After") and to throw grapes into the mouth of Ron Jeremy.

"Ron is the man," Huntington said of Jeremy, who plays an emcee in "Detroit Rock City." "During lunch one day we were just kind of messing around with the associate producer, and (Jeremy) got really funny. Grapes were being thrown, and he was catching them in his mouth. It was really odd and funny."

Almost as odd and funny as the '70s. The speech patterns were strange enough back then, Huntington said, like having to say "man," like, every other word. But it's the looks that concerned him the most.

"I wouldn't be caught dead in pretty much anything they were wearing back then," he said. Other than that, "I don't know. I thought it was a pretty cool time."